Youth in swimming pool. Photograph: Thomas Lohnes/AFP/Getty
During those nail-biting days preceding the decision over who would get to host the 2012 Olympics, it was often mentioned that there are more Olympic-sized swimming pools in Paris (20) than in the whole of the UK (19). With apologies to serious swimmers around the country, their sport, it was intoned, was drowning in the popularity rankings amid the huge success (at least commercially) of football, rugby and, yes, even cricket.
But while swimming as an unmissable spectacle – can you picture crowded pubs around the country overflowing with punters glued to the breaststroke at Crystal Palace (one of London's two Olympic pools) – may be a while off, could 2006 be the year when swimming, er, gets its head above water once again?
An article by Jackie Ashley yesterday on the importance of the sport to the nation's health, pointed out that around 12 million Britons are regular swimmers. In fact, swimming is apparently the country's favourite sporting activity.
This morning, Radio 4's Today programme picked up the theme with a number of features about the problems the sport faces. The Olympic gold medal winner, Duncan Goodhew, told the programme that at least a dozen London pools are threatened with closure and the picture was repeating across the country at a rate of about three a month. "We have to ask ourselves whether we want our children to learn to swim," he said.
Richard Caborn, the sports minister, said the cost of maintaining pools, many of which are over 100 years old, equates to a subsidy of £5 per swimmer per swim.
The problem facing community pools has been bubbling around for a while. In 2004, Ashley Norris pointed out that although there may be over 4,000 pools in Britain, many of them are in schools or private members clubs.
Supporters of our local pool, Ladywell in south-east London, have been fighting its planned closure. Lewisham council wants to build a secondary school on the land, but swimmers say it has treated them poorly and the battle appears increasingly acrimonious.
The London Pools Campaign points out that closing local pools sits uneasily with the government's drive to improve people's health. David Sparks, of the British Swimming Association, says changes in lottery funding mean that "the regions simply do not have enough money to invest in these major projects". He wants the government to provide local authorities with financial incentives to invest in pools.
